Advice for Aspiring Writers - A Guest Post by Karna Small Bodman

This month, Fabulous Florida Writers welcomes guest blogger Karna Small Bodman. Karna is the bestselling author of four novels that have hit “#1 in "Thrillers” on Amazon.  She is currently on tour promoting her new thriller, Castle Bravo. Karna was our featured writer on April 28, 2012.

One question that authors often get is, “Where do you get your ideas?” When I decided I wanted to write novels - political thrillers - (a life-long dream), I knew that I could pick up any morning newspaper and see a veritable petri dish of plot points. But I figured that “being there” was even better.

I started my career as a TV news reporter and anchor in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. Then I was asked to serve (6 years) in the Reagan White House – first as Deputy Press Secretary and later as Senior Director of the National Security Council. Talk about story ideas!!! I was scheduled to be in the car with Press Secretary Jim Brady on that fateful day of March 30 but stayed back at the last minute to do other work. Of course, that’s the day that John Hinkley fired those six shots in his assassination attempt! If I had gone to that event at the Hilton Hotel, I would have been standing right next to Jim and President Reagan.  Instead, I spent the day in the Situation Room as members of the cabinet gathered information, kept leaders of Congress and world leaders informed of developments and advised the American people on the operation to save the President’s life (Hinkley’s bullet was lodged ONE INCH from the President’s heart).

There were many other crises, events, disasters and “screw-ups” – as there are in any administration - and I use many of them in my novels, Checkmate, Gambit, Final Finesse, and the new one, Castle Bravo. Each story focuses on a different threat to our national security – at least the way I see them. So, of course, I’m trying to call attention to these subjects, not in a “textbook” sort of style, but by writing a thriller that I hope readers will enjoy while also learning about these issues. After all, it was George Bernard Shaw who said, “The best way to get your point across is to entertain.” I’m trying.

A word to aspiring writers – you don’t have to have The White House on your resume. In fact, my first two novels are “under the bed” – never got a contract. Agents and editors didn’t care about my resume.  They just wanted a good story they could sell.  After I wrote Checkmate, I did meet an editor at a writers’ conference in New Jersey. I signed up for a “pitch session” where you have a chance to sit down for a few minutes and pitch your story. Think of it as something like “speed dating.” She liked the concept and I eventually got an agent (at her suggestion) and a contract.

But here’s an idea for writers who also want to find an agent (rather than self-publish – though that is an option for everyone now).  Another thriller writer told me he had no luck for years in nailing down an agent, but then he had an idea.  He made a list of about 20 bestselling authors who wrote thrillers somewhat similar to his. Then he went to the library to find their FIRST books because on the “Acknowledgements” page, an author will traditionally thank his agent and editor. He made a list of all those agents and then double checked their websites and submission guidelines. He wrote a personal letter to each one saying, “You took a chance on __________, perhaps you will take a chance on me.” One day he got a call from one of those agents who agreed to mention his book to a publisher, and he finally got a two-book deal.  An idea you might try.

Bottom line: go to writers’ conferences and workshops. There is one coming up in my area on Saturday, February 23 organized by the Southwest Florida Romance Writers group. You don’t have to write romance novels – many authors who write in different genres attend. I’ll be there. You’ll have a chance to meet editors and agents and learn about the craft. Check it out at: www.swfrw.org . Remember, you never fail until you quit. Best of luck – and keep writing.

Next: Joseph Eger - Universal Music

John Mackie - He'll Take Manhattan

Sergeant John Mackie was a cop’s cop.  A seventeen-year veteran of the NYPD, he was a rising star in the department. He’d earned dozens of medals and commendations, including the prized NYPD Medal of Valor for actions taken by him in an incident in which two other officers were shot. Even though he was assigned to the tough Street Crime Unit, he loved the job and the people he worked with. One day, when Mackie was responding to meet a department undercover officer, an elderly lady missed a stop sign and plowed into his car.  The injuries he suffered as a result of the accident forced Mackie into early retirement.

“I left the NYPD kicking and screaming,” Mackie says. “Afterward, I needed a change, so I moved to Asheville, North Carolina.” He served a short stint there as the county undersheriff, then “decided to do what every good New Yorker must eventually do – I moved to Florida.” Since he was an avid Dodgers fan, he settled in Vero Beach.  A long and futile job search sent Mackie into a dark bout of depression. Still in his forties, he decided to do something he’d always wanted to do – write a book. “That terrible period wound up being the dawning of a new day,” Mackie says. “I spent the next ten years writing every day before finally getting published. I reinvented myself. I was no longer John the Cop, or John the Depressed Mope. Now I was John the Author.”

A high school drop-out who failed English, Mackie faced some formidable challenges. But challenges were nothing new to this tough ex-cop.  He joined writers groups and took adult education writing classes. He tried his hand at many different writing formats and wrote, rewrote, and polished his work. “Before self-publishing became what it is today, you needed three things to get published by a legitimate house - talent, perseverance, and luck,” he says. ”The most important is perseverance, and I knew I had that. I believed I had the talent, and eventually the luck caught up.” In July, 2002, Mackie’s first novel, Manhattan South, (NAL/Penguin) hit bookstore shelves. The story of a triple murder in a chic Midtown bistro, the book introduced Sergeant Thorn Savage, a dedicated boss in the Manhattan South homicide squad.

Thorn Savage and his crew returned in three subsequent mystery novels: Manhattan North, East Side, and West Side.  Praised by Publishers Weekly as “High intensity,” Mackie’s stories are based on real-life experiences and imbued with a grittiness and edge that makes them ring true. “Authenticity is really important to me,” Mackie explains. “Good novels require well-drawn characters and a plot that is larger than life. The challenge for the writer is to keep the larger-than-life characters and plot plausible and believable. I know my characters well. They’re based mostly on men and women I worked with… some are amalgamations. I try to show them in their true light, for better or worse. They aren’t superheroes. They’re just real folks who must deal with the un-real that often is police work in the big city.  The reader has to like the characters, identify with them, and believe in them… and dislike the bad guys.”

Mackie has now finished To Kill a Queen, the fifth novel in the Thorn Savage series. In this tale, Savage is traveling aboard the Queen Mary 2, enjoying a well-deserved vacation from the NYPD.  Mackie describes this book as “the all-too plausible tale of a two-pronged terrorist attack conducted against the world-famous Cunard liner.”  The takeover of QM2 by embedded terror team 1, and the coordinated high-seas intercept by terror team 2—who carries with them a one-kiloton nuclear device—occurs on the Atlantic Ocean just south of Ireland during one of the Queen’s regular New York-to-Southampton crossings. The story focuses on several passengers from different walks of life, who, like the heroic passengers aboard Flight #93, find themselves in a horrendous and seemingly hopeless situation. They must band together under Savage’s leadership in order to outwit and defeat a highly organized group of fanatic Jihadists bent on the destruction of QM2 on the high seas—with loss of life greater than that of 9/11.

Since parting company with NAL/Penguingroup, Mackie has had all rights to his books reverted from the publisher to himself.  All five of his novels are now available exclusively on Amazon Kindle.

Although he enjoys travelling and spending time with his wife, Bonnie, Mackie sets aside time every morning for writing. “I look at writing as the efforts of one for the delight and amusement of many,” he says.  “I always hope my readers will be entertained and amused and feel that their time with me has been well spent.”

For more information, visit the author's website at www.mackiej.com.

Randy Rawls - Small Town Sleuth

Randy Rawls is a small-town southern boy at heart. Born and raised in Williamston(pop. 3000), a small farming community in North Carolina, Rawls admits that his life was shaped by the values instilled in him as a boy - values like  personal responsibility, patriotism and fair play.  Add to this an intense love of the written word that was nurtured by the town librarian, and you can understand how this Delray Beach writer came to create Arthur Conan (“Ace”)  Edwards , Private Investigator - a character Rawls describes as “a nice guy, not tortured or brilliant, but a man who puts his nose to a problem and doesn’t give up until he finds a solution.”

Rawls spent his career in the army where he retired as a major in 1982 and went to work for the Department of Defense.  He credits the military with giving him the opportunity to travel, learn, teach, and “hone the values I inherited from my parents.” A voracious reader who carries a book everywhere – even to bed – Rawls’ love of reading helped him believe he could write. “I learned to write through osmosis,” he explains. “I figured the best way to learn was to read the genre I wanted to write.” He spent a full year immersing himself in first-person PI novels. Then he sat down and started typing. He admits that his first efforts were less than stellar, but he persevered. He joined a critique group and continued to compose and learn.  In 2004, his efforts were rewarded with the publication of Jake’s Burn, the first in what would become the six-book  Ace Edwards series.

Jake’s Burn tells the story of arson and murder in the small town of Cisco, Texas. Rawls set the book in Texas because he feels a special connection to the state where he lived for two years.  He became so fascinated by Cisco’s history that he decided to make it part of the plot. Weaving small-town history into the stories became a trademark of the Ace Edwards novels.  “I love history so much that I sometimes get preachy,” Rawls admits. “I work hard to make it an integral part of the story without boring the reader.” Judging from the success of the series, it would seem that Rawls has risen to the challenge.

As much as Rawls enjoyed writing his Ace Edwards books, he decided to try something different for his latest novel.  Thorns on Roses is a stand-alone thriller set in south Florida. The story of Tom Jeffries, a Broward County PI who sets out to avenge the gang  rape and murder of his best friend’s daughter, is an intense page-turner that examines the thin line between vengeance and justice.  

For his newest  book, Rawls stretches his literary wings even further “I wanted to see if I could write from a female point of view,” Rawls says.  Hot Rocks  features  Beth Bowman, a south Florida PI who finds herself framed for the murder of a client’s husband.  Rawls describes Beth as “tough as nails, but all woman,” and driven by the same small town values as his other protagonists.

Rawls hopes readers will enjoy his stories as much as he enjoys writing them. “I want my readers to be entertained, maybe find a smile or chuckle along the way and finish the book with a good feeling,” he says.  “For me, writing is my vocation and avocation.  And it’s just plain fun.”

For more information, visit the author’s website at www.randyrawls.com.

Next: John Mackie - He'll Take Manhattan



Who is the Real Florence Nightingale - A Guest Post by Enid Shomer

Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome our first guest blogger - poet, short story writer, and novelist Enid Shomer. (Enid was our featured writer on July 11, 2011.) She is currently on tour promoting her new novel, The Twelve Rooms of the Nile, a historical fiction set in 1850s Egypt. The plot centers around a relationship between writer Gustave Flaubert and Florence Nightingale who meet during a trip down the Nile River.

The Florence Nightingale in my novel The Twelve Rooms of the Nile is a sassy, ebullient, and witty woman.  But it took years of research to find this Nightingale, to liberate her from more than a century of wildly varied biography and opinion.  Along the way I encountered distortion, myth, and lacunae on a grand scale.

Initially, my ideas about Nightingale were based on popular culture and a single famous biography. From the former came the familiar if gauzy figure of the Lady with the Lamp—heroine of the Crimean War, and inventor of nursing. Then in college I read Lytton Strachey’s landmark volume Eminent Victorians. 

A member of the Bloomsbury group, Strachey was a stylish writer with a razor-sharp tongue who introduced a new kind of biography that combined psychological insight with sarcastic irreverence.  His portrait of Nightingale, still taught as a modern classic, is more character assassination than biography. He portrays a ruthlessly ambitious harridan who managed to work at least one friend to death. In my opinion, Strachey did more to distort her reputation than anyone before or since.

 In the following decades, Nightingale was subjected to a spate of scholarly critiques based on doctrinaire Freudianism, books such as George Pickering’s Creative Malady: Illness in the Lives and Minds of Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Using the fact that Nightingale was bedridden for eleven years after returning from the Crimea and was never truly healthy again, these studies painted her as a hysterical hypochondriac, a conniving neurotic who used her psychosomatic illness for personal gain.          Today, most scholars agree that the cause of her poor health was brucellosis, which she contracted in the Crimea by drinking raw milk or eating goat or lamb, common fare in Turkey then and now.  A disease of livestock transmissible to humans, brucellosis causes symptoms similar to rheumatoid arthritis plus fevers and debilitating bone pain.  Far from being a nutcase, Nightingale accomplished her legendary deeds not because of her illnesses, but in spite of them.

I also encountered a strange myth.  Many nurses I consulted thought that Nightingale died of syphilis. Nightingale lived to be ninety.  I believe she was a virgin.   She never wavered in her opposition to marriage because she knew it would mean the end of her independence and of her ability to answer God’s call to be of service to the world.  The sort of paradox that appeals to the imagination, this myth is credible in part because it is true to nineteenth-century mortality rates.  Syphilis claimed as many lives then as tuberculosis.  It caused the death, in fact, of the other main character in my novel, Gustave Flaubert, who caught it from the prostitutes he patronized along the Nile.   Another source of the myth may be Nightingale’s repeated insistence in diaries and letters on her own “very passionate nature,” a claim borne out by her life. She could be reckless and impulsive, and never did anything halfway.  Alone, she crawled on her belly by candlelight through the tunnels of the Great Pyramid. Unlike other women travelers on the Nile, she stayed on board her houseboat to go up (and down) the dangerous rapids at Aswan.

One essential trait almost never given its due in all the literature is her crackerjack humor, which allowed her to clothe her candor in the elegant robes of witty repartée. A letter she wrote as a six-year-old to her Aunt Anne illustrates how outspoken she was by nature:  “I hope you have got safe to your journey’s end…And I do hope you saw the eclipse of the moon on the day you went.  Papa says that you were blind boobies if you did not watch it for a whole hour, as we did.”     

Some of her accomplishments have gone largely unsung.  Few know that she pioneered the application of statistics to large populations and effectively invented Public Health.  Her laboratory was the hospital at Scutari, the barracks of the British Army and, later, all of India, whose health care system she administered from her living room through powerful friends—Prime Ministers and cabinet secretaries.  And although she did not subscribe to the germ theory, she instituted practices that had the same effect as if she had:  scrupulous hygiene, fresh air, and downstream sewage treatment facilities.  She cut the mortality rate of British soldiers in the Crimea by two-thirds.

The Nightingale I discovered and revived was not the dour and humorless figure so many of us associate with her name, but a vivacious rebel every bit the intellectual equal of  Gustave Flaubert with whom she shares her fictional adventures in my novel. Both of them were geniuses who balked at the world but left it richer than they found it.

Copyright 2012 by Enid Shomer

Upodate: NPR has chosen The Twelve Rooms of the Nile as one of the six best historical fiction novels of 2012.

Diane Sawyer - Mystery With a Side of History

Diane Sawyer finds inspiration all around her.  Her insatiable interest in people and places, past and present, has spawned several award-winning short stories and five meticulously researched novels she calls “a blend of mystery, romance, and history, where setting plays a vital part.”

Sawyer’s first foray into writing occurred when she was a six-year-old living in Greenport, a small town on Long Island. “I wrote a story, but I don’t remember exactly what it was about,” she says. “I just remember it was scary.” After earning a Bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York, she began teaching near New York City. She went on to get her Masters degree from Seton Hall University and a Ph.D. from Fordham University.

 In 1987, Sawyer moved to Florida and took a job as an educational consultant.  It was here that she took a writing class at a local recreation center. She began writing short stories and submitting them to magazines. After several were published, the success motivated Sawyer to try writing a mystery novel.  Initially, she had difficulty finding her niche. Then she hit on the idea of setting a story on Long Island in a fictional town patterned after the place where she grew up.

Her first novel, Montauk Mystery, is the story of a young woman who joins an archaeological expedition on an island that was home to the Montauk Indians.  A startling discovery puts her life, and the fate of the island, in jeopardy.  The concept for the story grew from Sawyer’s interest in the Montauk tribe. “I’m a research person, and I was surprised by how little was known about them,” she explains. “So I tried to learn everything I could to weave into the story.”  Published in 2000, Montauk Mystery was followed by two more Montauk books – The Montauk Steps (2000) and The Tomoka Mystery (2002) - and a stand-alone novel, The Cinderella Murders (2008).

Sawyer returns to Montauk in her latest book, The Treasures of Montauk Cove, a tale of murder and intrigue sparked by a mysterious bottle of wine.  The plot idea came to Sawyer during a wine presentation on a cruise ship. “The sommelier was talking about the exorbitant price of wine recovered from shipwrecks. He called it ‘Liquid Gold,’ ” she recalls. “So I started researching and discovered that there were lots of shipwrecks along the Long Island coast. I even got into the history of the geography of the area to see how a bottle of wine could make its way to Montauk. I think history buffs will enjoy it.”

Sawyer is currently at work on two novels, both set in St. Petersburg. The first, a fast-paced mystery, involves a jewel robbery gone bad that ends in multiple murders. In the second, a cold case missing-persons case heats up when new information emerges at an estate sale and unleashes a wave of terror. According to Sawyer, "These two mysteries could end the myth once and for all that St. Petersburg is a sleepy little town."

 Although her writing keeps her busy, Sawyer involves herself in a variety of outside activites becaue "you never know who you're going to meet or what they're going to tell you." She volunteers for Friends of the South Branch Library and the Dali Museum, and is an avid traveler and exercise buff.  She plans to fly to Ecuador this fall to explore the cities and towns and hike through the Amazon Jungle to see the flora and fauna. She looks forward most to the people she will meet along the way.

Her hard-cover mysteries, published by Avalon, have recently been published as paperbacks by World Wide Mysteries, and soon all of her works will be released by Amazon as e-books. This success is encouraging her to come up with more mysteries. Sawyer hopes her zest for living will come through in her stories and inspire her readers. "Life is one big adventure," she says. "Take chances, make choices, go for it."

Next: Randy Rawls - Small Town Sleuth

Sherryl Woods - Tales of Family and Friendship

Becoming a New York Times bestselling writer was never part of Sherryl Woods’s life plan. In fact, the only unsatisfactory grade on her second grade report card was for “Making up Stories.” So how does Woods explain that, fifty-odd years later, she is the author of over 100 romance and mystery novels? “At age seven,” she says, “I learned to overcompensate.”

When Woods decided to study journalism at Ohio State University, her intent was to do graphic design. Instead, she landed a job as a reporter for an Ohio newspaper and began a fourteen-year stint as a print journalist. After coming to Florida on vacation, she decided to stay. “When I realized I could be warm in February, I started looking for a job,” she says. She found one at Today in Cape Canaveral, then at the Palm Beach Post, and finally at the Miami News where she worked for six years before deciding it was time for a change. “I always said that if I got to the point where I was grumbling all the time, I’d quit,” she explains, “so I did.” A fan of romance novels, she thought she’d try her hand at writing them. After two of her manuscripts were purchased by Dell and Bantam, she never looked back.

Woods can now take a book from concept to completion in as little as three months. She credits her background in journalism for her prolific output. She likes to write what she calls “connected books” – books that help readers rediscover the sense of connection that is missing in today’s world. “My books draw you into a world of family, friendship, and heartfelt emotions. As a reader and a writer, I like to go back to that familiar world where things are the way they were when I was a kid. I hope my readers will want to return to that world with me.”

Readers will have a chance to visit that world with the release of three new books in Woods’s popular Sweet Magnolias series. Midnight Promises, Catching Fireflies, and Where Azaleas Bloom will take readers back to Serenity, South Carolina where the circle of friends who call themselves the Sweet Magnolias will grow by three new members. “I think what makes the Sweet Magnolias unique in some ways is that over the course of the books, the circle has become multi-generational,” Woods says.  “In this latest trilogy, three older women will join their ranks. These so-called Senior Magnolias bring their own unique perspectives to the compelling stories of topics that touch many of our lives.”

Woods takes a detour into the culinary arts with her newest release – The Sweet Magnolias Cookbook.  Based on the Sweet Magnolias series, this cookbook is full of Southern classics and heartwarming stories of friendship and fun. Dana Sue Sullivan, a popular character and Southern cook, shares her favorite down-home recipes as well as secrets, stories and small-town gossip from the world of the Sweet Magnolias.

Woods’s wish is that her readers will come away from her books with a sense of hope. “I want to tell stories that almost any woman can relate to. And if they find themselves in similar circumstances, they’ll realize that they can face them and triumph. If I can give readers a few hours of escape and make them believe there’s something brighter on the other side, I’ve done my job.”

For more information, visit Sherryl Woods’s website at www.sherrylwoods.com.

Next: Diane Sawyer - Mystery with a Side of History

Down Island with Michael Haskins

Maybe it’s the sun, or the heat, or the quirky characters that people the streets, but Key West has inspired storytellers since the days of Ernest Hemingway. And for mystery writer Michael Haskins, the city plays a central role in a series of books he describes as “a great tourist guide for visiting the Keys.”

According to Haskins, a Massachusetts native who moved to Florida 15 years ago, living in the Keys has provided a wealth of story material.  He calls Key West “a treasure trove of things you can spend a lifetime looking for; a place where you can observe people from all over the world letting their hair down.” Key West is the setting for Haskins’s “Mick Murphy Key West Mysteries,” a series of novels centered around the exploits of Key West journalist Liam “Mick” Murphy.

Haskins’ literary success must come as a shock to his tenth-grade English teacher, Mr. Carlin.  A less than an ideal student, Haskins was assigned to a study class for problem kids. One day, out of prurient curiosity, he picked up a copy of Hemingway’s Men Without Women. Mr. Carlin snatched the book away, telling Haskins he was too stupid to read it. “I took that as a challenge,” Haskins says. He became hooked on Hemingway and decided he wanted to write just like him. Fortunately, Haskins’ 12^th grade creative writing teacher recognized and encouraged his talent.

Haskins’ real writing education began when he took a weekend job in a newspaper office.  “Most of the writers back then didn’t have a formal education,” he recalls. “They were like characters right out of Damon Runyon. It’s where I truly learned journalism.” After high school, the paper put Haskins through an editorial apprenticeship. Later, he left Boston for Los Angeles where he worked in television and as a freelance photojournalist. While there, he took journalism courses at UCLA.  He also married and became the father of twin girls.

When Haskins “got fed up with Hollyweird” and moved to Key West, he became a writer for the Key West Citizen. He also spent five years as the city’s public information officer. These jobs gave him an insider’s look at Key West. This became the catalyst for a short story that grew into his first novel, Chasin’ the Wind (2008). The story has “Mad Mick” Murphy embroiled with federal agents, Cuban exiles, and a motley crew of Key West characters as he tries to avenger a friend’s murder. In the sequel, Free Range Institution (2011), Murphy uncovers a plot to smuggle a cheap, lethal drug into Key West. Stairway to the Bottom, released in Dec. 2012, pits Murphy against Boston gangsters, FBI agents, and Cold War spies.  The latest book in the series, Car Wash Blues (August 2012), has Murphy being hunted by two Mexican drug cartels. Haskins is currently working on Key West Latitude, the sequel to Stairway to the Bottom.

In spite of the danger and suspense in his stories, Haskins admits that it’s hard to find crime in laid-back Key West. He hopes his readers will share his passion for this unique city. “If you’ve been here, I hope the books will help you recapture the experience,” he says. “If you’ve never been, I hope you’ll want to come down and experience the Key West I love – a place that’s strange but friendly.”

For more information about Michael Haskins, visit his website at www.michaelhaskins.net

Next: Sherryl Woods - Tales of Family and Friendship